In a building for a store, an office or the like, a plurality of air conditioners may be installed to air-condition a wide open space without partitions or the like. In many air conditioners, control rules for autonomous control are user-configurable for each individual air conditioner, and many air conditioners are operated by a user using a remote controller.
If a user incorrectly configures a control rule, or incorrectly operates a remote controller, a plurality of air conditioners may sometimes enter a mismatched running state in which the air conditioners impede each other's effects. A mismatched running state refers to an operating state in which, among two air conditioners affecting a common space, one is performing cooling operation while the other is performing heating operation, for example.
In a mismatched operating state, mixing loss occurs and the energy efficiency is degraded. In addition, users in the space being affected by both heating and cooling operation experience decreased comfort. For this reason, various technology that minimizes the occurrence of a mismatched operating state is being proposed (for example, see Patent Literature 1 and 2).
For example, the technology described in Patent Literature 1 forbids changing the running mode of a fan coil when a running command for changing the running mode of a fan coil for a second zone that neighbors a first zone differs from the current running mode of an air conditioner for the first zone.
In addition, with the technology described in Patent Literature 2, when at least a predetermined number of individual air conditioners in a second group are running in a cooling/heating mode that is the reverse of the cooling/heating mode of individual air conditioners in a first group, the individual air conditioners in the second group shift the set temperature of individual air conditioners in the second group in the direction of the cooling/heating mode of the individual air conditioners in the first group.